Chapter 6 #2
She shifts her hips, letting the fabric slide down her thighs, and then she spins. I place a hand on her back and bend her over the kitchen counter, ass high and exposed. I swallow, hard, as I take her in.
She glances over her shoulder. “Well? Are you going to just look at me, or . . . ?”
She doesn’t get to finish the sentence.
I slide my hands up her back, down to her waist, and pull her into me.
My cock presses against her warmth, and I want to make this last, but I’m already so far gone there’s not a chance.
I push inside her, and she cries out, loud enough that if her neighbors have ears, they’ll know exactly what’s happening right now.
I steady her with one hand on her hip and the other winding into her hair, pulling her head back so her cheek is pressed to the counter and her mouth is open and panting.
“You’re so fucking tight,” I manage, voice rough. “Are you OK?”
She laughs, breathless, and pushes back, grinding her ass into me. “If I wasn’t, we wouldn’t be doing this right now. Just fuck me, David. Fuck me hard.”
Her words almost finish me. I grit my teeth and count to ten to keep from coming instantly. I set a rhythm—slow enough to savor the feel of her, but deep enough that she’s soon begging for more, fingers scrabbling at the countertop for purchase.
“Harder. I’m not going to break.”
I grip her thigh and pull her leg up, opening her wider, and she makes a sound that isn’t even remotely dignified. It’s pure surrender, and it knocks something loose inside me.
I lean over her back, mouth at her ear. “Is this what you wanted in your office the other day? For me to bend you over and fuck you on it?”
She laughs, breathless and hoarse. “Sounds like it’s what you wanted.”
“That’s not an answer,” I say, dragging myself out of her, tortuously slow. When I tease her with my tip, she whimpers.
“Fuck, David.”
“Tell me it’s what you wanted.” I drag my teeth over her shoulder. “It’s what I wanted, Nora. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve jacked off thinking about it.”
“Fuck! Yes. OK!”
“OK, what?”
“I wanted you to bend me over and fuck me.”
I groan and slam into her, and she cries out, arching back into me. Again. And again. Until the only sounds in the kitchen are the slap of skin on skin, her labored breathing, and me cursing under my breath because it feels impossibly good.
“Fuck, Nora.” I reach between her thighs and find her clit, slick and swollen, and she makes a sound that tells me everything I need to know. She comes less than a minute later, whole body trembling, biting down on the inside of her forearm to keep from screaming.
“David! Oh God!”
I keep thrusting until I’m right at the edge, then pull her upright so her back is pressed to my chest. She gasps, shivering, and I wrap my arm around her throat, hand splayed flat over her collarbone.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck—” And then I’m coming, hard, my vision dimming at the edges as her hips grind against mine and she whispers my name over and over.
I stay like that for a few seconds, forehead pressed to her shoulder. Both of us panting. The air in the kitchen thick and wild.
She laughs, giddy and wrecked. “So much for celibacy.”
I drop my head on the back of her neck and breathe.
For ten seconds, there’s nothing in the world except the warmth of her skin, and the absolute, terrifying rightness of this.
Then reality returns.
“Fuck.” I close my eyes. Press my forehead against her spine. “This isn’t why I came here.”
She stills. Her breathing evens out. Her heartbeat wild under my hand. The rest of her unmoving. Like she somehow expected this.
“David.”
Her hair tickles my cheek. I’m still holding her, hand spread over her collarbones—that intimate chokehold that should feel like a mistake but somehow doesn’t. It feels—not safe, exactly. Necessary.
And that's the problem. Because necessary is the word that comes right before dependent, and dependent is the word that comes right before destroyed.
I know this. I wrote the rule specifically for this.
For the moment when something feels so right that your whole body wants to stay, and the only intelligent thing to do is leave before staying becomes something you can't survive losing.
Fuck. Fuck my life. And fuck Kelsie for making everything so much fucking harder than it ever needed to be.
“I’m sorry, Nora.”
I step back and ease out of her carefully. She turns, cheeks flushed bright, hair a mess. She looks at me, and we just stare at each other for a beat, trying to inventory the damage.
She tucks her hair behind her ear. “You’re sorry.”
I scrub my hands down my face. “I keep fucking this up. I shouldn’t—Fuck. I’m just . . . I’m sorry.”
She glances down at her bare legs, her panties still tangled at her knees.
“That’s one way to feel about it.” She pulls her pants up and picks up her T-shirt, tugging it over her head.
She does it calmly, methodically, like a woman getting dressed after an ordinary evening instead of whatever the hell just happened.
“Nora.”
“It’s OK.” Her voice is so even it almost sounds rehearsed.
“It’s not—”
“It is.” She picks up her wine glass. Takes a sip. Sets it down. “We’re adults. This happened. It doesn’t have to mean anything beyond what it was.”
I stare at her. She meets my gaze without flinching.
“You have a rule,” she says. “I understand the rule. The rule makes sense, given everything with Michaela and the custody case.” She folds her arms lightly, contained.
“So we don’t need to turn this into a crisis.
We had a night. People have nights. It doesn’t change the fact that you’re a parent at my school with a pending custody case and neither of us can afford to make this complicated. ”
She says it like she’s reading from a script. Like she prepared for this exact possibility while I’m still trying to remember how buttons work.
I should feel relieved. She’s giving me exactly what the rule requires—an exit. A clean one. No mess, no expectations, no weight.
So why does her composure feel like the worst thing that’s happened tonight?
“Nora—”
“Go home, David.” She says it gently. Almost warmly. But there’s something behind it that I can’t reach—a door closing so smoothly I can barely hear the latch. “Get some sleep. You’ll be fine.”
I’ll be fine.
I want to argue. I want to say that nothing about this is fine, that the rule was supposed to protect Michaela and instead it’s turning me into a man who takes what he wants and then apologizes for taking it.
I want to tell her that the way she’s handling this—calm, generous, giving me permission to walk away—is breaking something in me that I don’t know how to name.
But I don’t say any of that, because the rule is still there, isn’t it? Standing in the wreckage of itself, insisting it was right.
“OK,” I say.
She walks me to the door. Archie trails behind, oblivious to the emotional catastrophe unfolding above his head.
“Good night, David.”
“Good night.”
I walk to my car. Get in. Sit in the dark, staring at the windshield.
Her porch light clicks off.
I drive home to my empty apartment with the taste of her still on my mouth, and I don’t think I’ve ever hated myself more.